OPB asked each of the candidates for the Portland City Council Position 2 to fill out questionnaires on their qualifications and positions on key issues. Here is a look at some of their answers. Not all of the candidates responded. Some answers have been edited for typographical mistakes and length.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shut down construction. What are the specific steps the city can take to prevent this crisis from worsening the housing crisis?
James "Jas" Davis: We need to push pause on all debt during this time. It does not work to push pause on work and income without also pausing interest accumulation and debt payments. We need a moratorium on evictions, rents, mortgage and loan payments across the board in both residential and commercial sectors. It is the equivalent of all of us taking a collective breath and freezing in place while the scythe of the Grim Reaper passes by. We all feel it as if time stands still. Why should it not stand still for our debts as it does for our paychecks? This would be easier to implement for loans from a local public bank. Those who provide essential services must still be paid.
Short of that systemic solution, the city must insist that banks operating within city limits provide mortgage relief/abatement, and that tenement housing within city limits extend rental relief. Ten years ago, taxpayers bailed out big banks only to watch them turn on customers and foreclose on millions of homes, impoverishing millions and contributing to an epidemic in homelessness. We cannot allow that to happen again.
Margot Black: Halted construction should not worsen the housing crisis. It's within our power to keep people housed and to house people with the housing stock currently available. We need a moratorium on all evictions and foreclosures. No one should be removed from their housing for inability to pay. Not renters, not people in hotels, not business owners, not homeowners. No cars or RVs used for housing should be ticketed or towed. We should house people in need in the many empty apartment units in the city, in hotels, and in AirBnBs.
Construction should resume as soon as it is safe, and to the extent that projects might stop because of economic conditions similar to the great recession, the city needs to be prepared to purchase these properties to expand our public housing supply, and continue construction.
Dan Ryan: Portland doesn't have enough affordable housing – and that's a failure of our current political leaders. Housing is yet another issue where our citizens have had broken promises on supply. We vote for affordable housing, yet the units don't appear fast enough. Not enough units have been built for over two decades and the math of supply and demand has triggered escalating cost and now we must embrace demand with affordability and access. I don't want Portland to be another San Francisco, with the very rich and the very poor and nothing in-between and COVID-19 will further disparities if we don't take action.
BUILD: the units we’ve already paid for in the two housing bonds. Stop allowing perfection to get in the way of good and work with the willing developers to build exclusionary housing. The state finally made it legal and then we allowed ideology purity to block results. Time for action and common sense. Dense City policies and too many Bureau signatures block the supply of multi-unit housing which is needed to lower the average cost. Building units that cost $400k isn’t going to get us out of this crisis. As a council member, I will drive the process, provide transparent data dashboards to hold us accountable.
PROTECTIONS: provide protections and financial support to help the elders who deserve to age in place after giving so much to our community, and parents with children who need stability for their children to have a successful education experience.
Jack Kerfoot: Construction permits in Portland had already fallen precipitously prior to the COVID-19 pandemic due to the city's recent increases in permitting fees, costs and inefficient permitting processes. I'm aware of multiple houses where the city's new permitting fees and costs added more than $150,000 to the eventual cost of the house—which starts to make the housing crisis in Portland less of a mystery. The building industry is already looking to other cities beside Portland for future construction work. COVID-19 makes this situation only more dire, since it will cause additional months of delay and cost, making it only that much more imperative that the city stop excessively burdening our community with costly delays and fees for anyone who builds new housing.
As Commissioner, I will request the mayor to appoint me to lead the Bureau of Development Services (BDS). As Commissioner over BDS, I will lead a comprehensive review of the current permitting process in collaboration with the private sector (real estate, developers, construction, etc.) to shorten the permitting cycle time. I will also seek to reduce permitting fees to encourage developers to continue building new, affordable housing. I will also seek to implement innovative tax programs to provide low-income housing and also allow developers to maintain their necessary profit margins.
Tera Hurst: Many construction projects are still active. The City must work proactively to ensure every contractor and subcontractor working right now is taking CDC and OHA guidance seriously and implementing all necessary social distancing protocols. This is important to protect workers, and also to maintain the Governor's confidence so that she does not order a complete halt of construction work.
I would reach out to the OR State Building and Construction Trades Council, Pacific NW Regional Carpenters Union, and other construction leaders to hear from them directly about whether the social distancing guidelines are workable on job sites, and also how their members are handling these unique challenges. In addition, I will push to use the remaining funds from the 2016 housing bond as quickly as possible.
I spearheaded the City’s efforts to build the Kenton Women’s Village - a transitional community that provides micro-housing for 14 homeless women in sleeping pods. Once elected, I will push to site and build additional micro-housing units as soon as possible because we know they work, they have won success from neighbors in Kenton, and they will provide socially-distanced shelter options for people experiencing homelessness if there is another wave of COVID-19.
Third, I will campaign to support Measure 26-210 and start planning now so we can use those dollars as quickly and effectively as possible.
Sam Chase: The best way to avoid worsening the housing crisis is to flatten the curve of COVID-19 cases as soon as possible so our economy can re-open safely. Simultaneously, we must preserve funding levels for current programs and services for those currently in need, and halt evictions and foreclosures to prevent those facing housing insecurity from falling into homelessness.
Cynthia Castro: COVID-19 has only exacerbated the already existing systemic failures towards our most vulnerable populations. Any steps the City takes towards recovery post-pandemic need to center with racial justice and prioritizing vulnerable communities. We cannot return to business as usual. Of greatest concern to me is the financial debts accumulated during the pandemic due to rent and or mortgage relief or government loans waiting for Portlanders post-pandemic.
With job and income loss and business closures during the pandemic, this will create a strain on Portlanders as they try to rebuild their lives and businesses. In the immediate term, the City, State, and Federal Governments need to provide greater financial relief for the most vulnerable community members, including providing direct cash into the hands of those not supported by the federal government, like undocumented immigrants.
Additionally, the City of Portland needs to invest more resources to help Portlanders stay housed. I support increasing short-term rental assistance and homeownership programs. City planning and capital projects need to include anti-displacement strategies as a standard practice. Finally, we need to reinvest in safety nets that have been chipped away over time and improve systems and structures that have perpetuated inequities. I support a universal basic income.
Julia DeGraw: To start, we have to keep people in their homes, which means finding ways to make sure that renters can stay in their homes once the eviction moratorium is lifted. We need to boost the rental assistance program and make sure renters at risk of not being able to pay their back rent are getting the money they need to stay housed. We need to push the federal government for additional resources for regular people in the next two stimulus packages as well.
As we get to the phase of the recovery where we can start building again, the City should incentivize alternative housing concepts such as land trusts, land banking, and cooperatives that help create permanently affordable housing. In the midterm, when shelter-in-place orders end, I want us to encourage co-housing options where younger people can be matched with empty-nesters seeking renters.
Lastly, I would explore ways to accelerate housing construction, particularly affordable housing construction, once we are able to build again. With the Residential Infill Project coming online, we may have a lot of new opportunities for building the more dense, affordable, equitable housing our city needs. We should also push for more federal money to have a regional housing boom that is desperately needed to meet demand and to assist in economic recovery.
Aquiles Montas: Providing guidance and supervision at job sites to have proper protections like face masks, gloves, sanitizers, hand washing stations, proper distancing when not working side by side, during breaks, purchasing, injuries.
Terry Parker: I don't see this construction shutdown happening in my neighborhood. An 88 unit market-rate development and a 112 unit development of mostly studio apartments are both proceeding full steam ahead. The possible need is for more non-profit developers to join in.
Diana Gutman: Construction in the city of Portland has not stopped. As I answer this question from my living room in NE Portland, I hear the loud rattling, humming and beeping of the constriction project taking place next door that started at 7 a.m. this morning. The new construction development is for an additional housing complex, The Glisan Street Townhome apartments. I was homeless for two years, and even now I still would not be able to afford to live at the Glisan Street Townhome apartments.
As we continue on with construction on housing units that are not affordable to Portlanders with zero to moderate-income, I am concerned that we as a city are perpetuating the housing crisis. The housing crisis in our city is not due to the lack of housing but is a result of socioeconomic disparity/ discrimination and building homes that are not affordable (most 1 bedroom 1 bath apartments in Portland start at $1200 and that's not including first and last month's rent plus a security deposit and any additional rental fees i.e. “move-in fees” etc.). It’s time to reprioritize the cost of living. With the COVID-19 pandemic at hand we as a city need to assess the current construction projects taking place in our city and priorities the project that will benefit our community now and set up long term provisions for the future.
Loretta Smith: I think we're going to need long term economic assistance for workers who may not be able to return because of the impact the coronavirus is going to have on our local economy. I also believe that we are going to need long term economic assistance specifically for small businesses for at least 12-24 months as the local economy begins to rebound.
The fact of the matter is that even when this pandemic ends we are going to have a slow crawl back to normalcy and even that is up to be redefined. We are a city of small businesses, entrepreneurs, gig workers, and craftsmen. If we aren't supporting workers and small businesses in a way that acknowledges the real daily struggles they face, we will essentially lose the essence of what makes Portland the city we know and love.
Despite years of work, homelessness continues to plague Portland. What is one specific step you would take in this effort?
James "Jas" Davis: I would advocate pursuing a Housing First approach, coupled with a program to reduce drug addiction on our streets.
Margot Black: The only way to eradicate homelessness in one step is to aggressively prioritize the "First" in the "Housing First" model. We have enough housing inventory to give everyone keys to their own home tomorrow, with ample housing stock left over, but overcoming the barriers preventing us from matching empty homes with people who need them would require an unprecedented shift in political courage and priorities. However, the COVID-19 crisis necessitates this shift.
My plan to meaningfully impact our homelessness crisis is three pronged. 1. House the houseless, 2. Keep people housed, and 3. Make sure that “affordable housing” is actually affordable. This is still my plan, but none of these 3 prongs can be done in one step, obviously.
Since this is a special election, the person who wins this seat will take office this year, as soon as early June, or late August when we will still be relatively early in the process of reacting to the economic impact of the pandemic. It’s difficult to say what my first step will be not knowing what additional steps will have been taken by then, but what I’d like to see happen is that we use our emergency powers to move a large segment of our homeless population into hotels and airbnbs and lay the groundwork for that to be permanent housing. Permanent supportive housing is a huge need but the infrastructure of many hotels and motels make it possible to quickly and efficiently deliver supportive housing with intensive wrap around services.
Dan Ryan: We need to address the root causes of homelessness: housing cost, loss of income, domestic violence, mental health and drug abuse. This issue is personal for me, I lost my third oldest brother on our streets 5 years ago (am the youngest of 8). As such, we need wrap-around services that would have helped my brother, none of us could house him with his triple diagnosis. I am not surprised the community stepped up and supported what the government was too smug to support.
First things first, we have a public health crisis on our streets and we must shelter people and remove folks from the streets under tarps and tents. We need to address these complex issues by disrupting the status quo, bringing new people to the table and getting people out of their silos. The current composite of Home for Everyone will not move us forward. We need more people from the private sector, fewer people who receive money from the government, and allow the leadership to be two tested executes who do have a transactional interest. Too often, it’s the same people at the same tables making the same decisions that got us into this mess. Some of my opponents have been running things here for many years – if you think they’re doing a great job, support them. I don’t. It’s time for new leadership.
Jack Kerfoot: A recent US Department of Housing and Urban Development report stated homelessness in America increased by 2.7% from 2018 to 2019. However, homelessness in California and Oregon increased by 16.4% and 9.7% respectively. Homelessness in Portland has been steadily increasing over the past four years. The economic impact of COVID-19 will also certainly cause homelessness in Portland to dramatically increase in 2020. There are solutions.
First, our city can take the lead in the coordination of the nonprofits and faith-based groups that are working to help the homeless. There are hundreds of nonprofits working independently and all competing for the same funds. The faith-based organizations (Christian, Jewish and Muslim) have begun to work together to improve the impact of their programs.
Second, our city must develop a strategic plan for our homeless. This plan would look at which programs have proven to be successful across America and then bring the private and public sectors together to implement a viable, sustainable plan. Ten years ago, the city of San Antonio brought the private sector and charities together to develop a strategic plan to help the homeless. The result was Haven for Hope, which is recognized as one of the best, if not the best, program in America. The cost for Haven for Hope is a fraction of the cost of the Multnomah County program for the homeless, which will be on the May 2020 ballot.
Tera Hurst: In Mayor Hales' office, I made sure Kenton Women's Village was on a trajectory to be open and operational before we left office. We need the resources to establish more successful efforts like that. This was a great example of government, business and neighborhood coming together to work on a solution. It is a model that many pushed back on and now they are seeing it is an effective and replicable model. The village is made up of 14 sleeping pods built and designed by Partners on Dwelling Initiative citywide coalition of Architects, housing advocates and houseless individuals. There is a communal kitchen, showers in customized shipping containers and a community garden. Residents receive case management to assist them in a transitional plan to permanent housing. My priority is to open at least 10 more villages within the first year, if not sooner.
Sam Chase: My experience and dedication to this issue make me the candidate who is most prepared to take on Portland's housing and homelessness crisis. As a Metro Councilor, I successfully fought to pass the nation's first regional affordable housing construction measure. I led the Affordable Housing Now! Coalition, to reform Portland's urban renewal and build thousands more affordable housing units—without raising taxes. I know how to build support for big, structural change. I've learned what it takes to win major reforms, and I'm ready to take on Portland's biggest challenge.
As Portland City Councilor, I will champion investments in services that have high success rates in helping people get off the street and stay out of homelessness such as case management, mental health support, addiction treatment, job training and other services connected to housing. Partnerships with the healthcare and service providers must be scaled up by investing in pilot projects and other programs that have the best-proven outcomes.
Cynthia Castro: I am proud that the City passed the $15 per hour minimum wage a few years ago, however, we need to continue adjusting wages to keep up with inflation. COVID-19 has highlighted the economic vulnerability of Portlanders. I support Universal Basic Income for Portland so that our community members have a safety net and would begin to dismantle the root causes of poverty.
Julia DeGraw: It took a pandemic for the City to finally treat the housing crisis like a real crisis. That said, the emergency funding from the federal government definitely helped make it possible, and the incredible hard work and dedication of City staff and community groups led to an incredibly fast turnaround on building out three camps across town for houseless individuals to be able to safely shelter in place.
The energy, urgency, and creativity the City is currently bringing to bear on the coronavirus pandemic is the kind of energy we need to continue to bring to the housing crisis moving forward. Given that the pandemic will be with us on some level for quite some time, we will have to continue to figure out how to address both problems simultaneously. I will end by simply reiterating that, until there is adequate housing (including supportive housing) for all Portlanders, we must find places to temporarily shelter people and provide them with sanitation, health services and food.
We also must end inhumane sweeps and not make the mere condition of being houseless a crime. Using this new urgent energy to help people I will push for the creation of tiny house villages where there are shared kitchens and bathrooms to help get higher quality deeply affordable homes for individuals and families currently living with housing insecurity or who are actually living on the streets. Kenton’s Women Village is a good example of this kind of housing.
Aquiles Montas: Separating them by their issues. Mental-drug-alcohol-abused-financial in order to place them in specific temporary housing with roundabout services
Terry Parker: For starters, the Residential Infill Project (RIP) as proposed needs to be rejected. Adding density in single-family home neighborhoods will target demolishing the most affordable homes and eliminate green yards that produce oxygen and remove big trees that act as carbon offsets. New construction almost always costs more. The greenest buildings are the ones already built. RIP was never designed to make housing more affordable. Portland's Comprehensive Plan designates town centers, major corridors and close-in to transit centers as the places to locate multi-family housing.
Within the plan, there is already enough land zoned for multi-family to meet Portland's need for additional housing. Better Housing by Design Standards for multi-family developments requires inclusionary zoning, but the affordable units must be identical to the market-rate units. Requiring for-profit developers to construct a separate number of affordable units proportional to the number of market-rate units they build or subsidize non-profit developers to do so would make more sense.
More non-profit developers are also needed to develop affordable pilot projects and identify any impacts if they are constructed close-in to single-dwelling zoned neighborhoods. 59% of low-income people drive to their place of employment. Adequate off-street parking with charging connectivity for electric cars needs to be required with all new residential developments so more streets don't become full-time car storage lots.
Diana Gutman: Homelessness is not a plague. Our city was built off of colonial violence. Racial disparities and housing inequities is the root cause of homelessness in our City. We have outdated racist policies that have been plaguing our city for over the last 20 years that we as a city have never addressed as a whole. Combating our homeless crisis requires advocacy from the Council.
Working with community partners and landlords to create housing programs for our vulnerable communities in addition to working at the state level with legislators on establishing concrete solutions. A rent assistance program is a quick and proven way to stabilize families straining under the weight of housing costs. Missing a rent payment can lead to eviction and even homelessness. Rent assistance is an investment in Portlanders with a big payoff. Establishing a statewide rent assistance program would help ensure everyone has a safe and stable place to live and improve the economic security of families and their well-being. Everyone in Portland needs a place to call home. I will always advocate for inclusive housing policies that will benefit everyone.
Loretta Smith: We're not accounting for alternative housing for people who don't meet HUD's chronically homeless definition. I think we're closer to the right combination of strategies than we've ever been before, but we have to be bolder, more creative if we are going to move the ball in the right direction. If we can figure out how to end inequities for the most disenfranchised in our city, often communities of color and individuals and families in deep poverty, then we can create a strong ecosystem that works for everyone.
What are the steps the city should be taking now to avoid dramatic budget cuts if the pandemic causes a big economic downturn?
James "Jas" Davis: The city should petition the governor to call an emergency session of the legislature to address pandemic-related recovery issues and should lobby for a set of relief bills including enabling legislation for a public bank. Closer to home, the city should defer non-essential costs and focus resources on recovery-related expenses. Finally, the city should explore creative scenarios to avoid mass layoffs, including cutting hours by up to a quarter across the board while maintaining health benefits for city employees.
Margot Black: This pandemic will cause a big economic downturn, it's unavoidable. But we can't cut services to the public, and we need to do everything we can to limit cuts to public jobs. We will need "unprecedented" action at every level, city, state, and federal to mitigate the impact of these "unprecedented times".
I believe that the only way to return to "normal" will be through enacting a (Green!) New Deal of similar or greater magnitude than what rescued the United States from the great depression. This will necessarily require progressively increasing taxes considerably on higher incomes, wealth, and corporations. While it might seem counterintuitive during a time when it seems like every business and organization is bleeding money, the reality is (at this moment, anyway) that the financial impact isn't distributed equally among individuals or businesses, and between federal bailouts to major industries and interest rates and zero, deep pockets are still deep.
We also need to be aggressively land-banking in the event of land values dropping or massive foreclosures, sell-offs, and short-sales. We did not do this during the Great Recession and have paid the price.
Dan Ryan: Shared sacrifice as we kindly commit to surviving as Portlanders is the goal. The revenues are dropping daily and we must be open to public and private partnering to ensure we sustain some flow of currency, even if it is much less. Eliminate many middle, nonessential positions and repurpose with our non-profit partners or out of work private partners with the skill sets to deliver food and shelter. The streamlining of bureaus and county and city services has been a vision of many who exit government for years.
Now is the time to do the radical common-sense reforms that lacked the political will before we had a crisis that will force us to act to survive. We must all live with less, live simply and care for one another. Sustain a foundation so our businesses can return will enough infrastructure to quickly return revenue streams to our more efficient and more resident facing services on the other side.
Jack Kerfoot: COVID-19 is a global pandemic, that has virtually shut down all nonessential operations around the world. It is a virtual certainty that the entire world will experience a major economic downturn. How long will the economic downturn last? Given there are many unknowns about the characteristics of this virus and there is no vaccine, I think it is highly likely there will be significant economic disruption for years.
It is essential that our city council be prepared for a range of economic scenarios. The economic downturn will result in significantly greater job losses, small and large businesses closures, continued increase in our homelessness, and dramatic decreases in city revenues. The city can no longer continue to increase fees and treat businesses as an ATM.
The city council must take the following action:
a. Develop a ranked list of priority expenditures b. Develop a series of budgets for different economic outcomes c. Implement strict cost control measures to eliminate fiscal waste and mismanagement. d. Implement a hiring freeze for nonessential personnel. e. Collaborate with the business sector to seek solutions to re-invigorate Portland’s economy. f. Actively recruit new businesses to establish operations in Portland.
The City Council must work closely with the business sector to mitigate the devastation from the economic downturn that is inevitable. The city government must also learn to stop wasteful spending and become fiscally responsible.
Tera Hurst: The city is in good financial health right now with general fund reserves built up to respond to crises. Because I had the opportunity to work closely on budgeting with our city budget office during the Hales administration, I am confident in the ability of the city budget office to lay out different scenarios that will help us navigate this incredibly tough financial time.
There are plenty of steps we can and need to take to make sure we are setting the city up for a less dramatic downturn by looking at overhead expenses that can be cut now including the steps the city took this week to furlough workers and considering a line of credit. These are tough times and we need to make difficult decisions. We also need to push the state and federal delegation to act quickly in getting more dollars flowing to Portland. This response will be the biggest response in our lifetime and we need to learn from previous responses. Last time we fell into a great recession, the government focused on the banks; this time we must put our resources into people.
Sam Chase: The city should look at possible efficiency measures that preserve jobs and preserve programs while streamlining resources — this way we can maintain services on lower budgets. But we must also look at ways to generate more revenue that don't put further financial burden on working families and small businesses.
Cynthia Castro: This week, the City's Chief Administrative Officer announced a mandatory 10-day furlough period for all non-represented employees, along with discussions happening with unions. Because the city's largest cost is personnel, these types of measures are inevitable to prevent job-loss down the road.
The City should continue to look to bureaus to determine where there could be opportunities for further culling of positions. Often these culls happen from the bottom up, getting rid of part-time, temporary or seasonal employees. I think the City should also have bureaus and Commissioners focused on management teams as well. Our highest-paid employees cost us the most.
In some instances, combining teams or removing layers of unnecessary management could create significant savings. Finally, the City should also look at the great work-from-home experiment and see how this might create cost savings from not having to take up so much physical space in buildings downtown. This could save the City millions of dollars in property savings and reduce commute and traffic congestion, with greater climate impact.
Julia DeGraw: Overall, I think that the City's budget process is opaque and doesn't adequately represent Portland values. For example, the City's last budget cycle was brutal, and that was when revenues were normal. We saw massive cuts to the Parks and Recreation Department, and there was a real resistance to exploring alternatives to those cuts.
The plan had been to hold steady in this upcoming budget, but now the City is anticipating a $40-$100 million decline in the general budget due to the coronavirus. There will be federal emergency funds, but there’s no doubt that the next budget cycle will be fraught with extremely tough choices. To the degree it can, the City should use federal emergency funds and its own emergency funds to help keep people in their homes and small businesses afloat throughout this crisis.
Within the city government, I want the City to maintain existing staff levels as best as possible and find creative ways to make up for staffing budget shortfalls, especially in program areas that are largely funded by fees and/or ticket sales, such as by exploring better staff-to-management ratios to help ensure there’s money to pay the workers. If the city must furlough employees and managers, the way furloughs are distributed should be equitable, meaning those who make the least should have the fewest furlough days, while freezes on raises and merit promotions should be instituted only if it’s to ensure fewer layoffs.
Aquiles Montas: Looking at funds and future projects that can be delayed and use as emergency funds in order to avoid cuts. Look at ways of finding overpayments, negotiate contracts.
Terry Parker: In addition to requiring the city's non-union employees to take some unpaid time off and negotiating with unions for something similar for represented employees; the City Council needs to declare an emergency whereby system development charges paid by developers can be utilized for maintenance, such as in parks and for street repair as opposed to just being utilized for capacity increases.
At PBOT, projects, like developing bicycle infrastructure and creating bus-only lanes, must be put on hold and be terminated. If the projects are to move forward after the economy improves, a total reassessment must take place that includes motorist participation. To address equity, the funding for these projects needs come from the people that utilize the alternative modes of transport, and not from motorist paid taxes and fees.
Diana Gutman: With the COVID-19 outbreak, our City had to act fast. We didn't have time to wait on a mandate stay-in policy from our Governor. I was pleased to see the City of Portland take a stand to ensure everyone's safety. Our City enacted a temporary moratorium on evictions and this is something I agree with. COVID-19 is crippling the economy in Portland and around the world. With businesses closed and unemployment claims spiking we need to start thinking about the long term effects.
As I stated before in response to question #1 we have learned that all along, evictions were avoidable; the homeless could’ve been housed and sheltered in government buildings; water and electricity didn’t need to be turned off for people behind on their bills; and more. As we set up provisions and policies to help our communities it’s crucial to think of the long term impacts of these policies that we set in place. We are learning that rigid standards that we have set for ourselves as a city can be changed, amended, or completely replaced; creating a city that is more inclusive to everyone. As City Commissioner I will use my voice and continue to push for inclusive policies and advocate for our city and these changes at a state level.
Loretta Smith: No new programs in the budget. Cut COLA's and freeze hiring.
What’s one thing you want to ensure is in the new Portland Police Bureau officer contract?
James "Jas" Davis: I support creating an Independent Police Review with authority to compel officer testimony, recommend disciplinary actions, and consider deadly force incidents. I favor making dismissing officers easier, expanding the scope of officer interrogations, lodging complaints permanently in officer files, increasing transparency in record-keeping and distribution, drug testing officers after use-of-force incidents, and ending the program of Retire/Rehire and the Extra Employment program. I'm committed to strong community and public participation and input into the contracting process.
Margot Black: Public distrust in the police force is high, for good reason but this can have very serious consequences if civilians don't call the police or when that that distrust causes the public to intervene in policing in a way that could cause harm to them or other bystanders. I fully support Unite Oregon's demands to city council about PPA's contract negotiations. In general, my "one thing" would be significantly increased oversight and accountability.
Specifically:
-An independent civilian agency must have explicit jurisdiction in deadly force cases.
-An independent civilian agency needs the ability to compel testimony and recommend discipline.
- In misconduct investigations, the officer being investigated should not have special privileges the public does not have.
- The City must be able to fire officers who have used excessive force or exhibited racism or other oppression against targeted communities. Provisions in the current contract severely limit the scope of misconduct investigations and narrowly restrict how discipline is handled.
-Require mandatory drug testing including steroids after officers use force on the public.
-The public should be able to make complaints without the offending officer having access to their name and information.
The Fesser case showed how deep and endemic the lack of accountability is in PPB is. If there aren't ways to hold "bad apples" accountable or for "good apples" to intervene without retribution then we shouldn't expect change.
Dan Ryan: Continuous learning on trauma-informed practices. I see Police Officers as front line social workers. We need to build bridges between the police and the organizations that serve our most vulnerable. Police are on the front lines to deescalate violence and they must be experts to pull off such challenging work.
Jack Kerfoot: In my outreach campaign, I have consistently heard strong support across all sectors of the city for the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) community police program. PPB currently has over 100 vacancies in the department, which dramatically limits the shifts available for community policing, which might normally be shifts that serve to build morale for our police officers also. These vacancies are hindering the effectiveness of our police force, making us less safe. Effective and accountable policing is a cornerstone for quality of life in our community.
If Portland is going to recruit the best and brightest to fill the current and future vacancies in PPB, it is essential that the next police contract provide incentives to recruit and retain top police candidates from across the country. Portland has substantial room to grow in becoming a community that can attract and retain the best and brightest. We need a comprehensive review of the PPB’s “discipline guide,” which establishes levels of discipline of various offenses.
I have ridden along in a patrol car with officers on duty, once each in the Central and North Precincts. The experiences provided me the opportunity to see the challenges our police face and to listen to the men and women who protect and serve. They really do serve "on the front lines," sometimes in situations where a social worker and a paramedic might be more appropriate first responders, but often putting their lives on the line.
Sam Chase: We simply cannot stand down where racism, abuse, and criminal behavior exist. We cannot simply throw our hands up and say that it's only in the hands of the Multnomah County DA and a grand jury. The first step toward better outcomes for our community is a better contract with the Portland Police Association. The City is currently in negotiations with the PPA, and the City needs to draw a line in the sand around discipline and professional standards. We also need to make sure that our officers are receiving the best training available and that PPB's command staff, Professional Standards Division, and Training Division are communicating with and responding to the needs of all the diverse communities in our city.
And we need to increase the role of public oversight, especially the Citizen Review Commission, in reviewing cases and recommending disciplinary action, including recommendations made directly to Chief Resch and City Council. I will look for the strongest systems of oversight that citizens and Portland electeds can have. Moreover, I will stand up Street Response to be available throughout the city. As the Executive Director for the Coalition of Community Health Clinics, I am a longtime advocate for medical, peer, and social workers as first responders where mental health or substance use may be a strong factor. The responders are much more successful on a case by case basis and develop excellent partnerships with police that improve success and decrease misconduct.
Cynthia Castro: Portland's police union contract has several provisions that are problematic, including a discipline system that makes an arbitrator the final decision maker on police discipline; this undermines the chief's ability to hold officers accountable. Policies also limit civilian oversight of police misconduct. One of the responsibilities of the Citizen Review Committee (CRC) is to hear appeals from community members on Portland police findings on officer misconduct complaints. CRC members, who are volunteers, have pressed for changes to improve their oversight capabilities with some questioning what authority they actually have to make an impact under the current system.
As City Commissioner, I would be on Council during police union contract renegotiations. This would be an opportunity I would use to address structural and contractual issues that would lead to better police accountability, improve community trust while supporting our police force.
Julia DeGraw: We need a community-centered contract that takes a holistic approach to increase accountability and help rebuild trust with Portland communities. This means increasing meaningful community oversight, including in cases of deadly force. I would also support better deescalation training for Portland Police and enhanced consequences for not following best practices in cases of excessive force.
Additionally, I would support a wellness program that helps make sure that our officers are mentally stable. PTSD, depression, and anger management issues are all not uncommon on the force, and officers need better access to help if they need it. I support lowering overtime work, especially for outside companies like Apple stores, and would support efforts to hire officers who live in Portland, as well as to streamline the hiring process so the Police Bureau can do better at competitively hiring good officers.
Aquiles Montas: Police accountability policies
Terry Parker: Transparency!
Diana Gutman: This is more than a one-note answer. The proven bias toward minorities and people of color is a troubling trend. In Portland, every time a police chief or mayor has decided to discipline or fire an officer for inappropriate use of deadly force or misconduct, the Portland Police Association (PPA) has the right to challenge the decision, resulting in sending the matter to arbitration.
This method does not work for our city and undermines the chief and police department’s ability to hold officers accountable when they kill or injure members of the public. I am in full support of SB1567A, this proposed legislation will restrict arbitration and close a legal loophole that prevents the firing of officers who gravely injure or kill members of the public. It's an uphill battle that's worth the fight to rebuild public trust in the Portland Police Bureau and its ability to discipline and hold officers accountable when misconduct occurs. As an indigenous woman and your prospective commissioner, I support implementing and amending policies to be inclusive. Public safety is a community effort, we must advocate for members in our community who are being subjected to discrimination and racial profiling.
Loretta Smith: The one policy change I would advocate for would be for Portland Police Officers to be required to live in the City of Portland. I don't believe we can be serious about community policing without requiring the members of our law enforcement are actually members of our community. We need to get back to a time when the people who were protecting and serving our community worked, lived, and played right alongside us.
Despite the city’s efforts on Vision Zero, people keep dying on Portland streets. Why are we failing?
Margot Black: We're not failing. We've spent the last 80 years or so and an untold amount of money designing streets for cars, heedless of the damage that that focus has had. It's going to take some time and a lot of money to change it back. Portland adopted Vision Zero at the end of 2016. Projects weren't really funded with a VZ focus until 2017, and projects take time to build, which means that 2019 was really when we first started projects finishing up, and we have many many miles of streets that haven't been touched yet. It's going to take time.
If we want it to move faster we are going to need to spend a lot more money on it. Not a few million a year, but much more than that. These projects are very expensive, if we want them happening in many places at the same time that will take a lot of money. If we're not ready to prioritize all of those projects at the same time, then we need to accept that this will be a longer process.
The shift we need on our streets and to our culture of how we use our streets is massive. That means we need better transit, better walking & biking facilitates, more bike share, less displacement, affordable housing, etc. Portland is working on all of these fronts, but it's important to understand that these are intersecting issues, and these are all things that are also difficult and expensive that need to be done on top of the very large expense that's needed just around making streets safer.
Dan Ryan: Vision Zero is yet another example of Portland adopting a high-blown promise in a policy, but then not implementing with creativity, inclusion and transparency to actually fulfill the lofty promises. I support this policy, who doesn't, but I am not satisfied with implementation, clearly the current mid-term grade is an F.
What are the North Star metrics that we can all agree on? Zero deaths to start. Then build a table of passionate level-headed advocates for transportation. People from the biking, trucking, transit and business community working together to pick sub-indicators metrics. Further break the metrics down using an equity lens. Build a diverse cross-sector table that is committed to six years to provide shared responsibility, accountability and credit.
We need a better government and I have experience orchestrating the necessary herding of the cats. PBOT certainly has the right ideas about design and infrastructure - those are two important ingredients for safety, but they're not the only ones. Along with design and infrastructure, we need more education and enforcement, and for that, you have to go beyond PBOT and insist that police make ending traffic deaths and injuries, a critical priority.
Jack Kerfoot: In June 2015, the Portland City Council adopted Vision Zero, a plan to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries on our city. Since the launch of Vision Zero, Portland Department of Transportation has spent over $100 million on crosswalks, flex bike lane wands, flashing beacons, lower speed limits, etc. to improve safety on our city streets. Yet traffic fatalities have continued to climb and in 2019, Portland had 49 traffic deaths, the most since 1997!
Why isn’t Vision Zero working? A major reason is Portland’s drivers! In October 2019, Quote Wizard released their annual ranking of cities that have the worst drivers in America. The Quote Wizard’s study showed that Portland had the worst drivers on a per capita basis of the 75 largest cities in America. Allstate Insurance released a similar study and ranked Portland 190th out of 200 cities on their list of “Best Driving Cities.”
What about the police? The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) is significantly understaffed and are unable to patrol all the streets and highways across the entire city, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The solution? Provide PPB the resources to install traffic enforcement cameras. International studies have shown that traffic enforcement cameras have resulted in reductions of 11% to 44% for traffic fatalities. Traffic cameras could save 5 to 20 lives a year. Portland, we need safe streets.
Tera Hurst: Walking home from the gym on a rainy night in January, I got hit by a car that was turning on to SE 12th from Belmont. The impact threw me across the street. It was terrifying for both me and the driver. We were both lucky that I was able to walk away with only a few bruises and bumps. It was poorly lit and could have been avoided with better lighting. There is a lot of work to do in our high crash corridors. We need to prioritize funding for safety improvements and ensure we are moving quickly on accomplishing the goals and plans for vision zero. We should look to other cities like Boston who have had successes in their implementation.
Cynthia Castro: The Portland Bureau of Transportation's Vision Zero was an ambitious plan to get more people out of cars, slow cars on the road down, and design streets with safety improvements. Since Vision Zero was funded and began implementation, Portland has spent tens of millions of dollars, yet traffic fatalities continue to increase.
There are many factors creating the inability to get closer to zero. Portland continues to be more congested. We have more people. This means more people driving, walking, and biking, etc. We also have a severe shortage of police officers. This means the traffic enforcement team, much like all other Police units are understaffed, so we aren’t catching or arresting DUII drivers before they hit somebody or kill themselves. We also have a vast number of streets across the City, but especially in the outer east, with poor lighting and lack of crosswalks. All of these issues create barriers to the City actually reducing traffic fatalities.
Julia DeGraw: I think there are several factors that hinder road safety and contribute to traffic fatalities. Better enforcement is essential to making roads safer. I'm committed to finding funding to increase staffing to help with this enforcement. I appreciate PBOT's efforts so far, including its public awareness campaigns on roads that have a particularly high rate of accidents, but it is troubling that, despite these efforts, traffic fatalities were up in 2019 over prior years. Living east of 82nd Ave., I know that the City needs to invest in the basics: sidewalks, streetlights, and paved roads.
When roads like 82nd Ave. get improved, it needs to be with transit, pedestrians, and cyclists in mind, not solely on single-occupancy vehicles. Relatedly, I want to dramatically expand the public transit system and increase ridership on it, which is not only good for road safety by taking cars off the road, but it also improves traffic and is essential to achieving our climate goals. Moving forward, we must find funding for projects that improve roads, and we need to focus on remaking thoroughfares so that they’re designed for multi-modal use and are aesthetically beautiful, safe for pedestrians and cyclists, full of reliable safe transit, and not designed primarily for cars.
Aquilas Montas: Because they have failed to build sidewalks, add street lighting, adding crosswalks with signals especially in the SE neighborhood streets. Lowering the speed by 5 miles did not make the problem go away. Also, they need to include to teach pedestrians and bikers to be aware of cars and have reflective colors at night.
Terry Parker: Vision Zero is an inequity. It only targets drivers while failing to bring the faults of other modes of travel into focus: pedestrians stepping off the curb without looking both ways, jaywalking and/or ignoring walk signals, and bicyclists being treated like royalty while continually flaunting traffic laws. I will push for equal enforcement of all modes.
Diana Gutman: In December 2019, 49 people died in Portland traffic deaths. Portland City Council passed a resolution adopting Vision Zero in June 2015. The Vision Zero program aims to eliminate deaths and serious injuries on Portland streets by 2025. This is a multifaceted problem. Unfortunately, we are not on track for achieving our Vision Zero goal. One of the steps has been to bring awareness to Metro staff by providing monthly fatal crash updates to key policy advisory committees. As Commissioner I would help facilitate work sessions and review the monthly updates. I believe that education is key and the guidance and feedback from neighborhood and community partners is vital in addressing this urgent issue and prioritizing the high impacted areas.
Loretta Smith: We are not calling these fatalities a public health crisis. In 2014 as a County Commissioner, I called for Multnomah County to identify pedestrian-related fatalities as a public health epidemic in our community. Six years later no new funds were secured to make sure we have protected bike lanes, bus islands, and other tools that allow us to prevent person-to-vehicle contact. I will revive that conversation as a City Commissioner.